I HAD planned to start on March 21, and rather late than early, to give the road
time for drying. The light arrived bravely and innocently enough at sunrise; too
bravely, for by eight o’clock it was already abashed by a shower. There could be
no doubt that either I must wait for a better day, or at the next convenient
fine interval I must pretend to be deceived and set out prepared for all things.
So at ten I started, with maps and sufficient clothes to replace what my
waterproof could not protect from rain.

As I looked this time from Leatherhead Bridge, I recalled “Aphrodite at
Leatherhead,” and these, its opening lines, by John Helston, the town’s second
poet. It is no new thing to stop on the bridge and look up the river to the
railway bridge, and down over the divided water to the level grass, the tossing
willows, the tall poplars scattered upon it, the dark elms beside, and
Leatherhead rising up from it to the flint tower of St. Mary and St.
Nicholas..The bridge is good in itself, and the better for this view and for the
poem. The adjacent inn, the “Running Horse,” and Elinour Rumming who brewed ale
there and sold it to travellers—

“Tinkers and sweaters and swinkers
And all good ale-drinkers”—

four hundred years ago, these were the theme of a poet, Henry the Eighth’s
laureate, John Skelton.